WordPress Core Contributor

Monthly Archives: May 2013

So back when the idea of Ghost (the hyped blogging platform alternative to WordPress) was first proposed, John O’Nolan suggested that he had no idea what framework would be used for it, but that it didn’t matter at the time.

Now that it has hit KickStarter, he has announced plans to build it out on Node.js with Express. Of the numerous frameworks he could have chosen for this, he chose one of the few that most (if not all) shared hosting providers don’t support. Node.js web applications require running a node server on it’s own port on the server, and this is something you can only really do on VPS and Dedicated hosting (it’s no wonder one of the partner backers is SingleHop – who only provides dedicated hosting).

Just like WordPress, Ghost will likely have a cheap hosted solution available from the creators of Ghost (think WordPress.com), however, just like WordPress, if you plan to write up your own extensions/plugins, you’ll likely need your own hosting. Shared hosting accounts for more than probably 90% of all custom WordPress.org installations.

It makes me wonder how many of Ghost’s backers are going to be incredibly disappointed when they realize they won’t be able to host their own Ghost website without paying out the nose for hosting and performing a fairly complex installation. That’s quite a bit to ask for someone only setting up a blog.